Massie Introduces Bill to Get US Out of NATO, By Paul Dragu
The New American

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) doesn’t trust the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On Tuesday he introduced a bill to get the United States out of NATO. And although it has a steep and slippery cliff to ascend, the bill provides hope for an idea whose time will, hopefully — maybe — eventually come.

Massie’s NATO Act is a companion bill to Senator Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) NATO Act introduced in June. Both bills also share the title “Not A Trusted Organization Act.”

The latter title is especially fitting. In the text of his bill, Massie explains why. “Shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, United States Secretary of State James Baker made assurances to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward,” the bill says. Yet “despite its waning relevance and prior assurance to the contrary, NATO began a profound eastward expansion in 1999, which, as of 2025, culminated in a land border with the Russian Federation that exceeds 1,500 miles and encircles the Baltic Sea.”

Massie continues:

Successive National Military Doctrines and National Security Strategies of the Russian Federation have framed the expansion of NATO as a pervasive threat to Russian security. In a speech before the Munich Security Conference in 2007, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin described NATO expansion as a “serious provocation” and referenced the assurances previously made by the United States. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022 demonstrates the Russian Federation’s willingness to employ military action in response to perceived security threats. NATO members have refused to rule out further expansion.

Broken Promise
Massie, who has a voting record that consistently aligns with the U.S. Constitution, a record rarely matched in its fealty since his entry into Congress more than a decade ago, makes a point about NATO expansion and Russia that has been slandered as “Russian propaganda.” This is not wholly unlike the “antisemitic” label lobbed at anyone with the audacity to question America’s foreign aide policy with Israel (all foreign aide should be eliminated), or disagreed with Israel’s indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza (any nation that kills tens of thousands of women and children deserves scrutiny).

Just because the Russians said it doesn’t make it false. We’ve made this very point in previous reports, as have many other trustworthy notable figures. The National Security Archive at George Washington University houses the declassified documents that prove the Russians were assured NATO would not encroach in their region of influence. Also, none other than the supreme authority on Russia containment, George Kennan, warned that NATO’s eastward expansion would trigger a violent reaction by the Russians.

Nevertheless, NATO’s promise to stay in Central and Western Europe has repeatedly been broken over the past three decades. And Massie, who has demonstrated the integrity and wisdom to consistently obey the Constitution, cites this as the first reason the United States needs to exit NATO: because it is untrustworthy.

Risky War

Another good reason why the United States should get out of NATO is because American participation “continues to risk U.S. involvement in foreign wars,” Massie points out.

To its credit, the Trump administration recently signaled that it, too, understands the Ukraine war could explode into a larger conflict. In its recently released National Security Strategy, the administration essentially says that its mediation efforts to end the war in Ukraine stem from the concern that European nations will eventually figure out a way to make matters worse. “Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states,” the document says.

It’s not bad enough that the West provoked an unstable, corrupt, and historically aggressive nation by going into its neighborhood. Now, under the cover of the irrational narrative that Russia will take over the rest of Europe after it spends the next 10 years trudging through the 80 percent of Ukraine it has yet to conquer, Europe is working on ways to keep the war going, and possibly, spread across the continent.

If Europe is successful, the war will expand. And it’s probable that it will draw in the United States. The United States, after all, is a NATO member, and the essence of that membership is collective defense. American men and women would likely once again be sent to die in war half a world away, as Massie warns.

Founders’ Policy

The very concept of NATO flies in the face of our Founding Fathers’ foreign-policy prescription. Massie acknowledged this in his bill, pointing out that “Our Constitution did not authorize permanent foreign entanglements, something our Founding Fathers explicitly warned us against.” One of those warnings came from President George Washington, who said in his farewell address:

Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

Massie posed another good reason to exit NATO: “We should withdraw from NATO and use that money to defend our own country, not socialist countries.”

European Tyranny

European nations have been socialist for decades, and many of their governments have devolved into blatant tyrannies. In England, a woman was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. This is the same country that made nearly 10,000 arrests in 2024 for offensive social-media posts. The year before that, U.K. police made nearly 14,000 arrests for unapproved social-media posts. Perhaps they should have diverted some of that police power to actually stopping criminals.

During the height of Covid-19 mania, France implemented one of the strictest and most pervasive vaccine passport systems in the world. People couldn’t get a coffee, watch a movie, or even visit a loved one at a hospital without their “papers.” This is the same government that drove Marine Le Pen from politics out of fear that she would win and implement laws to stop the flow of Third World invaders into France. And this is the same country whose president is using the resources of the government to go after an American podcaster for calling his wife a man.

In Germany, where the chief saber rattler of Europe, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, resides, they’re working on ways to shut down the most popular political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), out of fear that they too would put an end to the deluge of third world migrants overwhelming their nation.

Also happening in Europe: The European Union recently fined Elon Musk’s X 120 million euros under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA, implemented in 2023, was undoubtedly created to quash free speech on digital forums. Why? The same reason tyrants of yore crushed free speech: to stop people from criticizing their rulers.

Noninterventionism

So Massie makes a good point. What sense does it make for America, $38 trillion in debt, to subsidize Europe’s security? Why should Americans, who are fighting for their own country’s liberty and traditional values, protect a slew of nations that are becoming more tyrannical by the year? What sense does it make for Americans to protect a group of countries that are targeting American companies with outrageous fines for allowing free speech? These are not the actions of free societies, they are policies reminiscent of the Soviet Union. And what sense does it make to continue participating in an alliance that has no qualms with dragging our men and women to die on their continent?

We urge readers to connect with their representative and urge them to support this bill. If you’re not sure how to reach your representatives, you can use the link here.

This article was originally published on The New American.

Paul Dragu is a senior editor at The New American, award-winning reporter, host of The New American Daily, and writer of Defector: A True Story of Tyranny, Liberty and Purpose.

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